Shin-Soo Choo located his missing power stroke, joining Nieuwenhuis in hitting 2 HRs from the leadoff spot, including a gargantuan clout to start the game. But he whiffed in his other 3 trips, twice in RBI spots, as the Tribe went 0-for-10 with RISP.

Streaking, but slowly: After grounding out to 2B in his first 3 trips, Michael Brantley doubled to extend his hitting streak to 21 games. It was his 4th straight 1-hit game and 14th during the streak, which has no games of 3+ hits. It’s the longest streak of that peculiar nature since 2009, when Victor Martinez had a 25-game hitting streak all with 1 or 2 hits. Brantley’s next-longest hitting streak, 19 games, also had no more than 2 hits in a game.

Mets 9, @Rays 6: In consecutive games, the Mets faced the junior loop’s nos. 3 and 5 in ERA — David Price (2.40) and Jeremy Hellickson (2.65) — and gave each the worst beating of his career, at least by earned runs. Hellickson had never yielded more than 5 runs in his 45 career starts, but New York tallied 8 earnies on 9 hits and 3 HRs in 3.2 IP, scoring in each of his 4 innings and bumping his ERA all the way to 3.45.

Kirk Nieuwenhuis hit the Mets’ first leadoff HR in almost 2 calendar years, then drilled a 2-run shot in the 4th — oppo, on a 1-2 pitch — when the Mets erupted for 4 runs starting with 2 out and none on. The Mets have scored 48.5% of their runs with 2 outs.

The Mets’ last 3-game streak scoring 9+ runs ending exactly 6 years ago. The Rays last allowed 9+ in 3 straight games a year before that, June 2005. The Amazin’s swung so well in this series, they even nicked Fernando Rodney for just his 4th earned run this year, pushing his ERA over 1.

And there was even a redemptive moment for Jon Rauch, who cleaned up Johan’s bases-loaded, no-out mess in the 6th with 3 straight outs, starting with 2 Ks — just his second appearance this year with that many whiffs.

Break out the cheap-win champagne, Johan! A 41 Game Score was his 2nd-lowest ever in a winning effort.

Tigers 5, @Cubs 3: Justin Verlander gave back a 2-0 lead in the 2nd, but gave the Cubs just 3 singles over his last 6 frames, and after wasting many chances to retake the lead (3 DPs), the bats finally broke through in the 7th on a 2-out hit by Austin Jackson following Verlander’s sacrifice.

Jackson (4-2-3-3, HR, double, walk) went 2-for-2 with RISP, the rest of the Tigers 1-for-9; they began the day with the AL’s best RISP average. Jackson’s 2-run shot in the 9th gave a welcome cushion for Jose Valverde, who allowed a run while converting his 13th save in 16 tries. Besides cutting his over-all K rate, Jackson has made his best contact in RBI chances, just 5 whiffs in 36 PAs with RISP (14%) — less than half his prior career rate. He’s jacked his OPS to .957, which ranks 14th at this writing among players with 150 PAs.

Through 14 starts, the reigning MVP is 6-4, 2.66, with an 0.97 WHIP and 103 Ks in 102 IP. Last year at this point he was 7-3, 2.89, with an 0.94 WHIP and 93 Ks in 103 IP.

@Royals 4, Brewers 3: More misery for Milwaukee. John Axford blew a save for the 2nd night in a row, and once again wildness of all stripes was the culprit. Leading off the 9th, Mitch Maier struck out on 3 pitches, but the last one got away and Maier got on. He moved up on a groundout, and stayed there as Alcides Escobar, Wednesday’s 9th-inning hero, went down swinging for what should have been the final out. Up stepped CF Jarrod Dyson, batting .233 for his career, .250 this year with 4 RBI in 141 ABs — the worst ribby rate in the majors, other than opposing CF Nyjer Morgan. Axford threw him a strike, and then 4 straight balls, putting the winning run on base.

And then, this happened (try to count the mental and physical errors on the play), giving KC their first 3-game home winning streak — all by 1 run, all won in the 8th or later. These last two walk-off wins are their only ones this year.

It’s the 2nd time this year that multiple runs scored off Axford as a direct consequence of a batter reaching on a SO/WP.

Astros 6, Giants 3: It took just 2 pitches to assure no repeat of Wednesday’s historics, and J.D. Martinez hit his first-ever grand slam, leading Houston to just their 5th win in 18 games and 9th in 31 road tries.

Martinez was hitting .226 and slugging .357, both last among 16 qualified LFs. But he’s hitting .295 with RISP (18 for 61), and .167 with the bases empty (18 for 108).

Just 4 Ks by the Astros, ending an 8-game streak with 9 or more, the longest such streak this year by a margin of 3 games. (H/T to Evan for this observation.)

Anyone looking for another SF no-hitter was barking up the wrong Z. Barry Zito has never had a 9-inning CG with less than 4 hits, nor an 8-inning CG with less than 3.

It’s the 3rd time in his last 4 starts that Parker went 6+ scoreless stanzas. He’s allowed 2 runs or less in 8 of his 10 starts this year, and 9 of 11 in his career, with at least 5 IP in all 9. That 9-of-11 matches the best career-opening run since at least 1918, shared by 4 others.

On arrival in Denver, Moss was 2 for 13 in 5 games this year, with a HR and 1 RBI. He went 6 for 13 in the series — 4 HRs, 2 doubles — with 8 RBI, 5 runs … and 6 strikeouts.

The A’s have been shut out 11 times, more than any other team, and 2 or less in 26 games (tied with 2 NL teams) — but they scored 8+ in all 3 games in Coors, their first such streak since 2009.

Diamondbacks 11, @Rangers 3: Eighth win in 11 games for the Snakes. Texas scored first, but by the time they scratched again it was 9-1 in the 7th.

Scott Feldman has lost 6 consecutive starts, tying Ervin Santana for the longest streak this year. He’s 1-11 in his last 16 starts dating to 2010, with just 2 QS. Three pitchers are winless through at least 7 starts this year: Feldman, 6.50 ERA; Chris Volstad, 7.46 ERA; and (of course) Cliff Lee, 3.18 ERA.

He hasn’t been able to play often, but Lyle Overbay (5-2-3-3) has a 1.010 OPS in 80 PAs.

Texas has scored 9+ runs 11 times (tied for the most in MLB), winning them all by a combined score of 131-40. But they haven’t matched any of those outbursts to the 7 games in which they’ve allowed 8+ runs, all losses, by a combined score of 81-31.

@Cardinals 5, White Sox: Beltran on the bench and Holliday hitless? No problem: Allen Craig (.354/1.085) doubled twice and David Freese drove him in twice with a double and HR, leading the Redbirds to victory and ending a 5-game span of 2 runs or less.

For the first time in ages, Josh Hamilton has company atop the home run chart. Adam Dunn‘s 3-run HR was his 4th in 5 games, tying him with Hamilton at 22 for the year.

Be True to your school: Dunn also collected his 49th walk and his 99th strikeout, reaching that SO mark in game #63 — the fastest pace ever, in case that wasn’t self-evident. At his present pace, Dunn would finish with 56 HRs, 126 walks, and a record 254 strikeouts in 699 PAs — with just 263 balls in the field of play. If you can find a qualified hitter with more strikeouts than balls in play, you win my Buck O’Neill Kansas City Monarchs tee-shirt. (Yeah, I already checked Mark Reynolds — not even close.) By the way, he’s also on track for 128 RBI, a mark reached by just 5 White Sox a total of 7 times (none since 2002), and 100 Runs. Whatever the cost of those strikeouts, there aren’t many others this year on pace for those production levels.

No matter whom you like in the NL Cy Young race, he’s going to face some tough competition. There are currently eleven qualified NL pitchers with an ERA+ of 150 or better (see table below). The most in a full season, since 1901: 7 in 1969, 5 in 2003 and 1919.

46 Comments

I count one mental error and one physical error at the end of the Brewer game, both by that cutoff man. And the mental error is arguable. If he makes a good throw to second, the runner on 3rd isn’t going home. And if the batter continued to 2nd and got thrown out, the inning and the threat are over.

The bad throw by Weeks? Probably doesn’t get the runner with a good throw.

As for my charge of a mental error, I think it’s wrong to make such a hasty throw to try to get the trail runner, when the lead runner can end the game. With one out you might risk it, because the man on 3rd is much more likely to score starting from a 1-out situation. With 2 outs, it’s a mistake.

When the throw gets to 2nd, the runner isn’t even in the picture, having retreated towards 1st. That illustrates the haste of the turn-and-throw by Maysonet — had he taken a split second to see that runner’s actual location, he could have made a more careful throw. His actions suggest that someone else yelled for the throw to go to 2nd. But with 2 outs and the winning run on 3rd, you just can’t make an emergency throw to another base. You can’t. That’s the mental error.

By the way, great play by Aoki cutting the ball off and getting it in quickly.

And Pena probably no intention of going to second. Thinking about where the infielders were on that ball, he certainly rounded first extremely widely because there was no down side to doing so. The SS was down the LF line, the 3rd baseman was on the bag, the 2nd baseman was on the bag and the first baseman was in the cut off position between third and home, which meant, of course, that no one was covering first (unless RF Corey Hart was both alert and quick). In that situation, the runner at first should do exactly what Pena did, round first and go about halfway to second. There is no one who be able to get behind him to cut him off from the return to first. And the proper play for the SS in that case is to catch the ball, see him and start running directly at him. He knows he cannot beat a quick, short throw to second, so he will retreat. Throwing to second was unnecessary and the wrong play.

Voomo — i agree and disagree. Not really a bad effort by the cutoff man to try and get the runner, and a good throw by Weeks wouldve nailed the runner at home (watch it in slow-mo, and its surprisingly clear). But a bad throw to Weeks is what really doomed them. The Brewers might be in trouble, heading to Minnesota now, where they tend to struggle.

A continued Cy Young effort by Greinke would help a lot. It will be a true shame (tho doubtful) if the Brewers deal him before deadline. I think we all know he’s not meant to pitch in NY or LA anyways.

JA, I’m trying to work out the NL average for scoring with 2 outs, I think it’s 39.5%. I had a feeling the Giants would rank particularly poorly in this stat, and yes, they come in at 30.6%. Is there an easy way of seeing the leaders/stragglers in this category?

I clicked the “0 outs” link, copied the breakout data into Excel, and repeated for “1 out” and “2 outs.”

Then I went to work massaging the data in Excel — labeling each set of rows by the number of outs, sorting the rows by Team and Outs, and calculating the percentages.

In order to condense 3 rows for each team into one, I copied it into Word and used a series of wildcard find-and-replace actions — a very potent tool for manipulating patterns of data. (There’s probably a more direct way to do it in Excel, with subtotals or pivot tables, but I’m self-taught and once I know steps that will work, I sort of lose interest in learning the finer points.)

Once I had it in the shape I wanted, I copied it back in Excel, added the other offensive data from the “2012 Totals” breakout, did some more shaping, saved it as a .csv, imported into the WordPress table thingy, etc., and voila.

John: Firstly I was unaware that by clicking on the number of outs you would get a break-out by team.That makes it easy.
Secondly, I tried to duplicate your chart using Excel only. I was unable to paste the team break-out data into Excel. I then clicked on the words Permanent Link and got a repeat of that break-out with the notation CSV. Clicking on CSV did nothing, otherwise I could have pasted into Excel and then used the Text to Column command to get the proper format.

I’m pretty sure all the formatting could be done on Excel without putting data into Word.

I agree that it is not as hard as it sounds, there is just a lot of tedious re-arranging.

My tonight is not your tonight, I’m in California. I have noticed that you stay up late so perhaps something could be worked out. Between now and 7 PM, my time, I am going to be in and out. After that would be fine but I’ve never used the chat box, is it hard?

By the way, I forgot to follow up on the main reason that I did the table (besides making RJ happy) — to look for a relationship between HRs and 2-out scoring. And now that I look, I don’t really see it.

For each out number, I divided the 30 teams into 3 groups by the percentage of runs scored in that situation — high, medium, low — and then totaled the HRs for each group. The results:

Verlander’s victory is his first Win since the near no-hitter v the Pirates on 5/18 – which also happened to be a Fri Night. 2 Weeks prior to Santana’s gem. With Millwood & Co last week that would have been 3 out of 4 Fridays with No-Hitters had Verlander completed his.

Well, inter-league play is now half over so it might be a good time to compute the likelihood that the two leagues are equivalent in overall quality of teams. Yes I know that can be a tricky thing to define; for the sake of argument here let’s define it as: if the entire season were IL games only, each league would end the season with same record.

IL games played: 126
IL Records:
AL: 68-58
NL: 58-68

Two tailed binomial probability of one league having 68 or more wins after 126 games played: 0.164

Thus, not significant at the traditional p = .05 used for significance testing, but certainly not looking good for the NL either.

Maybe wasn’t as clear as I should have been in #8 there. Should be:
“Two tailed binomial probability of one league having 68 or more wins after 126 games played **assuming equivalence of the two leagues and a non-biased set of series matchups to date**

And of course, it’s not even possible for the two leagues to have identical overall records if all games were IL games (until next year). I meant, each league ended at exactly .500 win percentage.

What an excellent question. (BTW, do we have a hip phrase yet for the opposite of “That’s a clown question, bro”?)

I don’t have any answers, alas. But it could be just a random scattering of data. We know that they all have to add up to 100, ’cause that’s the basis of ERA+. But a large number of high data points doesn’t have to mean a large number of high-negative points (i.e. below 100) — it could just be a dearth of guys in the low 100s.

In fact, there is a rather large gap from the 11th-best ERA+ in the NL (Vogelsong, 158) to #12 (Kershaw, 144) — and 20-point drop from #11 to #13 (Greinke, 138).

I don’t know enough math to really tackle the question, but just trying to think it through, two things come to mind:

1) In any data pool that grows over time, we would expect to see more extremes earlier in the process, as performance tends to regress toward the mean.

2) It seems possible that the league ERA would tend to be higher in the first half than the second, as teams tend to weed out the underachievers. If such a trend existed, it would cause the individual ERA+ of the high achievers to be somewhat higher in midseason than at year’s end, even if their own performance never wavered.

If you limit this question to qualifiers you get off the 100 standard. Looking at the league-wide splits starters are currently pitching to a 4.17 ERA, while relievers have a 3.65 (in almost exactly half the innings as starters). If I’m reading this correctly, that results in about a 107 ERA+ for relievers and a 97 for starters. But this doesn’t tell the whole story since pitchers with poor ERAs are more likely to be demoted, skipped or have their innings limited.

I would chide you for citing small samples, Voomo — — except that they skew in the same direction as his career splits.

By the way, there are 102 players since 1901 with a slugging average of .500 or better in at least 3,000 PAs. The 2nd-lowest career BA belongs to Harmon Killebrew, .256.

Not only does Dunn have the lowest BA on that list, .243, but the 13-point gap between him and Killer is by the far the largest. The next-biggest gap is at the other end of the spectrum, 8 points between Cobb and Hornsby.

John: Concerning Adam Dunn’s SO and BIP stats:
I ran PI for all players with 149 or more SO and calculated the differences between BIP and SO. NO one had more SO than BIP. The closest qualifying player was Jack Cust in 2007 (507 PA) whose number of SO was 73 fewer than his BIP. The cloest non-qualifier was Mel Nieves in 1997 (405 PA) with 47 fewer SO than BIP. Next closest non-qualifier was Dunn in 2011 (496 PA) with 63 fewer.